Wang Ping (author)

Wang Ping is a Chinese-American author and academic. Ping's writings center around the past and present of China, and the experiences of Chinese immigrants in America.

Life and education

Ping was born in Shanghai in 1957, and spent her childhood on an island of the People's Republic of China in the East China Sea. Despite having only a few years of primary education, she was admitted to Beijing University, from which she was awarded a BA in English Literature in 1984. Ping emigrated to the United States in the following year, obtaining her MA in English Literature from Long Island University in 1987. It was at LIU that a professor inspired her to write fiction. She obtained her PhD in Comparative Literature from New York University in 1999.

Writing

Ping is primarily a writer of fiction and poetry which is very strongly informed by her own life experiences. Her first publication was a collection of short stories, ''American Visa'', in 1994. She followed this up in 1996 with a novel, ''Foreign Devil''. Two poetry collections followed, ''Of Flesh & Spirit'' and ''The Magic Whip'' . In 2006 ''Emperor Dragon'', a traditional Chinese folk tale, was published. A second collection of short stories, ''The Last Communist Virgin'', was published in 2007.

Ping has published works of non-fiction as well. An expanded version of her doctoral disseration on foot-binding in China was published in 2000 as ''Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China''.

Ping has also edited and contributed to the translation of works from Chinese, such as an anthology of poetry from China, ''New Generation: Poetry from China Today'' , and ''Flames'', by Xue Di.

Ping's poetry, fiction and essays are frequently published in journals and anthologies.

Academic career

Ping spent much of the 1990s as a writing instructor or poet in residence, and in 1999 obtained a position as assistant professor at Macalester College. She is currently an Associate Professor of English at Macalester, and teaches courses in creative writing and poetry.

Awards

Ping has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts for poetry, and the Minnesota State Arts Board for fiction.

External links and sources

Wang Meng (author)

Wang Meng is a Chinese writer.

He served as Minister of Culture from 1986 to 1989.

Wang Anyi

Wang Anyi is a Chinese writer, and currently the chairwoman of Writers' Association of Shanghai. The daughter of a famous writer and member of the Communist Party, Ru Zhijuan, and a father who was denounced as a Rightist when she was three years old, Wang Anyi writes that she "was born and raised in a thoroughfare, Huaihai Road." As a result of the Cultural Revolution, she was not permitted to continue her education beyond the junior high school level. Instead, at age fifteen, she was assigned as a farm labourer to a commune in Anhui, an impoverished area near the Huai River, which was plagued by famine.

Transferred in 1972 to a cultural troupe in Xuzhou, she began to publish short stories in 1976. One story that grew out of this experience, "Life In A Small Courtyard", recounts the housekeeping details, marriage customs, and relationships of a group of actors assigned to a very limited space where they live and rehearse between their professional engagements. She was permitted to return home to Shanghai in 1978 to work as an editor of the magazine "Childhood". In 1980 she received additional professional training from the Chinese Writer's Association, and her fiction achieved national prominence, winning literary award in China. Her most famous novel, ''The Everlasting Regret'' , traces the life story of a young Shanghainese girl from the 1940s all the way till her death after the Cultural Revolution. Although the book was published in 1995, it is already considered by many as a modern classic. Wang is often compared with another female writer from Shanghai, Eileen Chang, as both of their stories are often set in Shanghai, and give vivid and detailed descriptions of the city itself.

A novella and six of her stories have been translated and collected in an anthology, "Lapse of Time". In his preface to that collection, Jeffrey Kinkley notes that Anyi is a realist whose stories "are about everyday urban life" and that the author "does not stint in describing the brutalising density, the rude jostling, the interminable and often futile waiting in line that accompany life in the Chinese big city". In March 2008, her book ''The Song of Everlasting Sorrow'' was translated into English.

Works

*雨，沙沙沙
*黑黑白白
*王安憶中短篇小說集
*流逝
*尾聲
*黄河故道人
*六九屆初中生
*母女漫遊美利堅
* Lapse of Time 蒲公英
* Love in a Small Town ''小城之戀''
* Love on a Barren Mountain ''荒山之戀''
* Baotown 小鮑莊
*海上繁華夢
* 旅德的故事
*流水三十章
*神聖祭壇
*米尼
*The Everlasting Regret ''长恨歌''

Su Tong

Su Tong is the pen name of a Mainland writer born in Suzhou and now based in Nanjing. His real name is Tong Zhonggui .

He is best known for his book ''Wives and Concubines'' in the West, published in 1990. The book was adapted into the film, ''Raise the Red Lantern'' by director Zhang Yimou. The book has since been published under the name given to the film.

His other works available in English translation are '''' and ''My Life as Emperor'' .

Shi Weihan

Shi Weihan, born early 1970s, pen name of Wang Fan , is one of the most influential representatives of modern China mainland martial arts novelists.

His novels and short fiction composed at the beginning of this century earned him a reputation as a martial arts fiction genius writer, since one of his greatest achievements was that he constructed a consistent virtual world in which most of his works was developed. This style of affiliation between fiction is widely admired among current Chinese readers.

Shi Kang

Shi Kang is a modern Chinese writer born in 1967. His novel 《晃晃悠悠》 is sometimes described as being a bit like "Catcher in the Rye" and has been very popular in China. It was turned into a play in 2005.

His novels have not yet been translated into English.

Works

* 《支离破碎》
* 《晃晃悠悠》
* 《一塌糊涂》
* 《在一起》
* 《悟空传》

Qu You

Qu You , courtesy name Zongji and self-nicknamed Cunzhai , was a novelist who lived in the Ming Dynasty, and whose works inspired a new genre fantasy works with political subtext of the Qing Dynasty.

Biography

Born in Qiantang , Qu You was famous as an adolescent poet. He became a teacher-official in Lin'an , then promoted to be the Head of Secretary of the Zhou Kingdom. But at the height of his career, he was jailed for ten years.

After his release in 1425, he worked as a tutor in the household of Lord of Ying State . He was reinstated as an official, but he resigned shortly, never returning to the world of politics again, in action. His works, though entertaining, have undertone that expresses concerns and discontent that he had with politics of the Ming Empire.

Works

*''The Record of Jiandeng'' : 40 volumes
*''The New Discussions of Jiandeng'' : 4 volumes

Qu Bo (novelist)

Qu Bo 曲波 was a novelist in the People’s Republic of China. His name was also translated as Chu Po . Qu 曲, the family name, has meanings of curve, melody and tune. Bo 波 stands for ripples and waves. His first book ''Tracks in the Snowy Forest'' made him one of the most popular authors at the time .

Life

Born in Zaolinzhuang Village 枣林庄 , Huangxian 黄县, at the north-east coast of Shandong Province 山东省, Qu Bo’s early education was through a private school where he started to gain his sound knowledge of and succinct language skills. His father, Qu Chunyang 曲春阳 and mother, Qu Liushi 曲刘氏 owned a small business of cotton dyeing, which failed when western textiles poured into China.

In 1938, at the age of 15, he left home and fought in the war against the Japanese invasion . His name was changed from his childhood name Qu Qingtao 曲清涛 into Qu Bo by the officials of the Eighth Route Army. Qu Bo had further education at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University in Shandong and became a journalist of an army newspaper, The Progress. The army turned into the People's Liberation Army after the Japanese surrendered, and Qu Bo continued to battle in the Chinese civil war in the northeast of China, protecting the regional civilians from robbery and killings by the regional bandits and brigands. In the army, he served as a young literacy teacher, a political commissar and finally a colonel. In 1946 he married Liu Bo 刘波 who was a head nurse of a hospital at the same army regional headquarters.

During the communist regime after 1949, Qu Bo worked in the railway industry and the Ministry of Machinery until his retirement, and lived in Beijing for the rest of his life.

Qu Bo was an active member of the Chinese Writers’ Association 中国作家协会 , and was recognised as a Chinese contemporary writer in the history of Chinese Literature. He had, however, never stopped his full time industrial management jobs and only wrote books and articles during his spare time. He visited Russia, Pakistan and England as an author as well as industrial director. His novels were made into films, Beijing Opera musicals and TV shows.

Bibliography

Novels

Tracks in the Snowy Forest 林海雪原 , People’s Literature Publishing House 人民文学出版社. His major success, a thrilling tale of a small group of selected soldiers who went into the snowy mountains searching and fighting dangerous hidden bandits and brigands.
1,560,000 copies of 林海雪原 were printed during 1957-1964 in three editions. There was no further record of the number of copies in later several editions and prints. Qu Bo was seen as one of the many victims of copyright infringement or anarchy . The book was translated into English, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Norwegian and Arabic.

Roar of the Mountains and the Seas 山呼海啸 , China Youth Press 中国青年出版社 . An adventure story and romance set in Shandong Province during the Anti-Japanese War. The writing was completed before the great cultural revolution and the publication was delayed for more than 10 years.

Qiao Longbiao 桥隆飚 , People’s Literature Press 人民文学出版社. A tale of a patriotic hero who was later enlisted into the communist forces during the war against Japanese. The book was completed before the great cultural revolution, but again the publication was delayed for more than 10 years.

Stele of Rong E 戎萼碑, Shandong People’s Publishing House 山东人民出版社. A story reflecting the importance of Chinese women in the war against Japanese.

Short Stories

Mostly about daily life in an industrial frontier, e.g. 热处理 , 争吵

Prose

Mostly travel writings and features 散观平武 澳洲遥祭洛兄

Poetry

Mostly in the classical style for special occasions

Qiu Xiaolong

Qiu Xiaolong is an English language poet, crime novelist, critic, and academic,

He has published several mystery novels, including ''Death of a Red Heroine'', which won the Anthony Award for best first novel in 2001, and ''A Loyal Character Dancer''. Both books featured Chief Inspector Chen Cao, a poetry-quoting cop with integrity.

Bibliography

*''Death of a Red Heroine''
*''A Loyal Character Dancer''
*''Lines Around China''
*''When Red Is Black''
*''A Case of Two Cities''
*''Red Mandarin Dress''
*''Cité de la Poussière rouge'' Liana Levi ISBN 978-86746-493
*''The Mao Case''

Poetry Translations

* ''Treasury of Chinese Love Poems''
* ''Evoking T'ang''

Qian Zhongshu

Qian Zhongshu was a scholar and writer, known for his burning wit and formidable erudition.

To the general public, he is best known for his novel ''Fortress Besieged'' . His works of non-fiction are characterised by their large amount of quotations in both Chinese and Western languages .. He also played an important role in the of the Chinese classics late in his life.

Life

Qian Zhongshu did not talk much about his life in his works. Most of what we know about his early life relies on an essay written by his wife Yang Jiang, Born in Wuxi, Qian Zhongshu was the son of Qian Jibo , a conservative Confucian scholar. By family tradition, Qian Zhongzhu grew up under the care of his eldest uncle, who did not have a son. Qian was initially named Yangxian , with the courtesy name Zheliang . However, when he was one year old, according to a tradition practised in many parts of China, he was given a few objects laid out in front of him for his "grabbing". He grabbed a book. His uncle then renamed him Zhongshu, literally "being fond of books", and Yangxian became his intimate name. Qian was a talkative child. His father later changed his courtesy name to Mocun , literally "to keep silent", in the hope that he would talk less.

Both Qian's name and courtesy name predicted his future life. While he remained talkative when talking about literature with friends, he kept silent most time on politics and social activities. Qian was indeed very fond of books. When he was young, his uncle often brought him along to tea houses during the day. There Qian was left alone to read storybooks on folklore and historical events, which he would repeat to his cousins upon returning home.

When Qian was 10, his uncle died. He continued living with his widowed aunt, even though their living conditions worsened drastically as her family's fortunes dwindled. Under the severe teaching of his father, Qian mastered classical Chinese. At the age of 14, Qian left home to attend an English-speaking missionary school in Suzhou, where he manifested his talent in language.

Despite failing in Mathematics, Qian was accepted into the Department of Foreign Languages of Tsinghua University in 1929 because of his excellent performance in Chinese and English languages. His years in Tsinghua educated Qian in many aspects. He came to know many prominent scholars, who appreciated Qian's talent. Also, Tsianghua has a large library with a diverse collection, where Qian spent a large amount of time and boasted to have "read through Tsinghua's library". It was probably also in his college days that he began his lifelong habit of collecting quotations and taking reading notes. There Qian also met his future wife Yang Jiang, who was to become a successful playwright and translator, and married her in 1935. For the biographical facts of Qian's following years, the two memoirs by his wife can be consulted .

In that same year, Qian received government sponsorship to further his studies abroad. Together with his wife, Qian headed for the University of Oxford in . After spending two years at , he received a ''Baccalaureus Litterarum'' . Shortly after his daughter Qian Yuan was born, he studied for one more year in the University of Paris in France, before returning to China in 1938.

Due to the unstable situation during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Qian did not hold any long-term jobs until the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. However, he wrote extensively during the decade.



In 1949, Qian was appointed a professor in his ''alma mater''. Four years later, an administrative adjustment saw Tsinghua changed into a science and technology-based institution, with its Arts departments merged into Peking University . Qian was relieved of teaching duties and worked entirely in the Institute of Literary Studies under PKU. He also worked in an agency in charge of the translation of Mao Zedong's works for a time.

During the Cultural Revolution, like many other prominent intellectuals of the time, Qian suffered persecution. Appointed to be a janitor, he was robbed of his favorite pastime - reading. Having no access to books, he had to read his reading notes. He began to form the plan to write ''Guan Zhui Bian'' during this period. Qian and his wife and daughter survived the hardships of Cultural Revolution, but his son-in-law, a history teacher, was driven to suicide.

After the Cultural Revolution, Qian returned to research. From 1978 to 1980, he visited several universities in Italy, the United States and Japan, impressing his audience with his wit and erudition. In 1982, he was instated as the deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He then began working on ''Guan Zhui Bian'', which occupied the next decade of his life.

While ''Guan Zhui Bian'' established his fame in the academic field, his novel ''Fortress Besieged'' introduced him to the public. ''Fortress Besieged'' was reprinted in 1980, and became a best-seller. Many illegal reproductions and "continuations" followed. Qian's fame rose to its height when the novel was adapted into a in 1990.

Qian returned to research, but escaped from social activities. Most of his late life was confined to his reading room. He consciously kept a distance from the mass media and political figures. Readers kept visiting the secluded scholar, and the anecdote goes that Qian asked an elderly British lady, who loved the novel and phoned the author, "Is it necessary for one to know the hen if one loves the eggs it lays?"

Qian entered a hospital in 1994, and never came out. His daughter also became ill soon after, and died of cancer in 1997. On December 19 1998, he died in Beijing. The Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the PRC government, labelled him "an immortal" - a term usually reserved for revolutionary martyrs.

Works

Qian dwelled in Shanghai from 1941 to 1945, which was then under Japanese occupation. Many of his works were written or published during this chaotic period of time. A collection of short essays, ''Marginalias of Life'' was published in 1941. ''Men, Beasts and Ghosts'' , a collection of short stories, mostly satiric, was published in 1946. His most celebrated work ''Fortress Besieged'' appeared in 1947. ''On the Art of Poetry'' , written in classical Chinese, was published in 1948.

Beside rendering Mao Zedong's selected works into English, Qian was appointed to produce an anthology of poetry of the Song Dynasty when he was working in the Institute of Literary Studies. The ''Selected and Annotated Song Dynasty Poetry'' was published in 1958. Despite Qian's quoting the Chairman, and his selecting a considerable number of poems that reflect class struggle, the work was criticized for not being enough. The work was praised highly by the overseas critics, though, especially for its introduction and footnotes. In a new preface for the anthology written in 1988, Qian said that the work was an embarrassing compromise between his personal taste and the then prevailing academic atmosphere.

''Seven Pieces Patched Together'' , a collection of seven pieces of literary criticism written over years in vernacular Chinese, was published in 1984. This collection includes the famous essay "Lin Shu's Translation" .

Qian's ''magnum opus'' is the five-volume ''Guan Zhui Bian'', literally the ''Pipe-Awl Collection'', translated into English as ''Limited Views''. Begun in the 1980s and published in its current form in the mid-1990s, it is an extensive collection of notes and short essays on poetics, semiotics, literary history and related topics written in classical Chinese.

Qian's command of the cultural traditions of classical and modern Chinese, ancient Greek , Latin, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish allowed him to construct a towering structure of polyglot and cross-cultural allusions. He took as the basis of this work a range of Chinese classical texts, including ''I-Ching'', ''Classic of Poetry'', ''Chuci'', ''Zuozhuan'', ''Shiji'', ''Tao Te Ching'', ''Liezi'', ''Jiaoshi Yilin'', ''Taiping Guangji'' and the ''Complete Prose of the Pre- Dynasties'' .

Familiar with the whole Western history of ideas, Qian shed new lights on the Chinese classical texts by comparing them with Western works, showing their likeness, or more often their apparent likeness and essential differences.

Qian Zhongshu was one of the Chinese authors best-known to the Western world. ''Fortress Besieged'' has been translated into English, French, German, , and Spanish.

Besides being one of the few acknowledged masters of vernacular Chinese in the 20th century, Qian was also one of the last authors to produce substantial works in classical Chinese. Some regard his choice of writing ''Guan Zhui Bian'' in classical Chinese as a challenge to the assertion that classical Chinese is incompatible with modern and Western ideas, an assertion often heard during the May Fourth Movement.

Posthumous publications

A 13-volume edition of ''Works of Qian Zhongshu'' was published in 2001 by the Joint Publishing, a hard-covered ''deluxe'' edition, in contrast to all of Qian's works published during his lifetime which are cheap paperbacks. The publisher claimed that the edition had been proofread by many experts. One of the most valuable parts of the edition, titled ''Marginalias on the Marginalias of Life'' , is a collection of Qian's writings previously scattered in periodicals, magazines and other books. The writings collected there are, however, arranged without any visible order.

Other posthumous publications of Qian's works have drawn harsh criticism. The 10-volume ''Supplements to and Revisions of Songshi Jishi'' , published in 2003, was condemned as a shoddy publication. The editor and the publisher have been criticized. A facsimile of Qian's holograph has been published in 2005, by another publisher. The facsimiles of parts of Qian's notebooks appeared in 2004, and have similarly drawn criticism.In 2005, a collection of Qian's English works was published. Again, it was lashed for its editorial incompetence.

Further reading

Innumerable biographies and memoirs in Chinese have been published since Qian's death.

An introduction to Qian's style of thinking can be found in the English translation of ''Guan Zhui Bian'':
*

Five of Qian's essays on poetry have been translated into French:
*

Ni Kuang

Ni Kuang is a prolific novelist and scriptwriter, with more than 300 published martial arts and science fiction novels and more than 400 movie scripts.

Born as Ni Chong , he grew up in Shanghai. He worked as a official in the 1950s in Inner Mongolia before moving to Hong Kong in 1957.

His science fiction stories, which have been enjoyed by generations of juvenile readers in Hong Kong, usually take the form of - at the end the unexplainable is often explained by pointing to the doings of extraterrestrial life. The most famous heroes in his science fiction stories, which have been adapted into TV dramas and films, are Wai See-lei and Yuen Tsang-hop . In their adventures, critics of communism are common. Wai See-lei was born in a wealthy and traditional big family, somewhere in the south-eastern region of Yangtze River. Here he was trained with many kinds of martial arts. He became an orphan early, but he has no financial concerns. After he had grown up, he moved to Hong Kong, got married with the daughter of the head of underground society, and his adventures became international, sometimes even intersolar. Wai's stories take first person narrative.

Ni wrote many scripts for Shaw Brothers Studio, and often co-wrote scripts with Chang Cheh, including hits such as ''One-Armed Swordsman'', ''The Assassin'' and ''Crippled Avengers''.

Ni helped Jin Yong to write episodes of his martial arts novels when Cha was busying himself with other business; and, according to the late Wong Jim, that was the reason why Cha, dissatisfied with Ni's often wild extemporisations, had to revise his novels. It is known that Ni had written at least an extended episode in ''Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils'', when Cha was out on holidays abroad, although much of it was excised in Cha's first revision. Ni, while helping Cha write a chapter while he was busy, made A Zi, a character from ''Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils'', blind in the story. Cha has since re-edited his swordfighting works but still left this part, written by Ni, in his work.

Ni Kuang later migrated to the United States in the 1990s and has continued his writing career there. In 2006, Ni and his wife moved back to Hong Kong after he sold his home in the United States.

Mo Yan

Mo Yan is a modern author, described as "one of the most famous, oft-banned and widely of all ". He is known in the West for two of his novels which were the basis of the film ''Red Sorghum''. He has been referred to as the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.

"Mo Yan", meaning "don't speak" in Chinese, is a pen name. His real name is Guan Moye .

His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including English, German and French.

Personal life

Mo Yan was born in the Shandong province to a family of farmers. He left school during the Cultural Revolution to work in a factory that produced . He joined the People's Liberation Army at age twenty, and began writing while he was still a soldier, in 1981. Three years later, he was given a teaching position at the Department of Literature in the Army's Cultural Academy.　

Writing style

Mo Yan's works are predominantly social commentary, and he is strongly influenced by the political critique of Lu Xun and the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Using dazzling, complex, and often graphically violent images, Mo Yan draws readers into the disturbing yet beautiful, kaleidoscopic universes of his stories. Like American author Stephen King, Mo Yan sets many of his stories near his hometown: Northeast Gaomi Township in Shandong province.

Extremely prolific, Mo Yan wrote his latest novel, "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out" in only 43 days. He composed the more than 500,000 characters contained in the original manuscript on traditional Chinese paper using only ink and a writing brush.

Works

Mo Yan has published dozens of short stories and novels in Chinese. Several of his novels have been translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, professor of East Asian languages and literatures at the University of Notre Dame.

His first novel was ''Falling Rain on a Spring Night'', published in 1981.

His works include:
* ''''
* ''The Garlic Ballads''
* ''Explosions and Other Stories'', a collection of short stories
* ''The Republic of Wine: A Novel''
* ''Shifu: You'll Do Anything for a Laugh'', a collection of short stories
* ''Big Breasts & Wide Hips''
* ''Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out''

Other published works include ''White Dog Swing'', ''Man and Beast'', ''Soaring'', ''Iron Child'', ''The Cure'', ''Love Story'', ''Shen Garden'' and ''Abandoned Child''.

Awards

* Neustadt International Prize for Literature, candidate, 1998
* Kiriyama Prize Notable Books , 2005
* Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize XVII, 2006
* Man Asian Literary Prize nominee , 2007

Adaptations

Several of Mo Yan's works have been adapted for film:

*''Red Sorghum''
*''Happy Times''
*''Nuan''

Mian Mian

Mian Mian is a young writer. She writes on China's once-taboo topics and she is a promoter of Shanghai's local music. Her publications have earned her the reputation as literary wild child.

Her first novel, ''Candy'' , has been translated into English. Her other novels include ''每个好孩子都有糖吃'' . Her novel ''We Are Panic'' was made into a movie, Shanghai Panic, in which she also acted one of the lead roles.

Mao Dun

Mao Dun was the pen name of Shen Dehong , a 20th century novelist, cultural critic, and . He was also the Minister of Culture of China from 1949 to 1965. He is currently renowned for being one of the best modern novelists in China. His most famous work are '''', a grand novel depicting life in cosmopolitan Shanghai, and ''Spring Silkworms''. He also wrote many short stories.

He adopted 'Mao Dun' , meaning "contradiction", as his pen name to express his sigh for the conflicting revolutionary ideology in China in the unstable 1920s. His friend Ye Shengtao changed the first word from 矛 to 茅, which literally means "thatch", to prevent him from political persecution.

Early life

Mao Dun was born in Tongxiang County, Zhejiang Province, China. His father Shen Yongxi taught and designed the curriculum for his son, but he died when Mao Dun was ten. Mao Dun's mother Chen Aizhu then became his teacher. He mentioned in his memoirs that "my first instructor is my mother". Through learning from his parents, Mao Dun developed great interest in writing during his childhood.

Mao Dun had already started to develop his writing skills when he was still in primary school. In one examination the examiner commented on Mao Dun's script: '12 year old young child, can make this language, not says motherland nobody'. There were other similar comments which indicate that Mao Dun had been a brilliant writer since his youth.

While Mao Dun was studying in secondary school in Hangzhou, extensive reading and strict writing skills training filled his life. He finished reading ''Illustrious Definite orders'' , ''Shi Shuo Xin Yu'' and a large number of classical novels. These novels influenced his writing style and his idea of writing.

Mao Dun entered the three-year foundation school offered by Peking University in 1913, in which he studied Chinese and Western literature. Due to financial difficulties, he had to quit in the summer of 1916, before his graduation.

The trainings in Chinese and English as well as knowledge of Chinese and Western literature provided by the fifteen years' education Mao Dun received had prepared him to show up in the limelight of the Chinese journalistic and literary arena.

Journalistic career

After graduation, Mao Dun soon got his first job in the English editing and translation sections of the Commercial Press , Shanghai branch. At the age of 21, he was invitied to be the assistant editor of ''Xuesheng Zazhi'' under the Commercial Press, which had published many articles about the new ideologies that had emerged in China at that time.

Apart from editing, Mao Dun also started to write about his social thoughts and criticisms. To some extent, he was inspired by the famous magazine New Youths. Like in 1917 and 1918, he wrote two editorials for ''Xuesheng Zazhi'': ''Students and Society'' and ''The Students of 1918'', those were significant in stimulating political consciousness among the young educated Chinese.

At 24 years of age, Mao Dun was already renowned as a novelist by the community in general, and in 1920, he and a group of young writers took over the magazine Xiaoshuo Yuebao , which translated means "fiction monthly", to publish literature by western authors, such as , , , , , , , , etc., and make new theories of literature better known. Despite the fact that he was a naturalistic novelist, he admired writers like Leo Tolstoy, for their great artistic style.

In 1920, he was invited to edit a new column: ''Xiaoshuo Xinchao'' in ''Xiaoshuo Yuebao''. He even took up the post of Chief Editor of the Monthly in the same year and was obliged to reform it thoroughly, in response to the . His young writer friends in Beijing supported him by submitting their creative writings, translating Western literature and their views on new literature theories and techniques to the magazines. ''Wenxue Yanjiuhui'' was formed partly because of this. The reformed Monthly was proved to be a success. It had facilitated the continuation of the New Cultural Movement by selling ten thousand copies a month and more importantly by introducing Literature for life, a brand new realistic approach to Chinese literature. In this period, Mao Dun had become a leading figure of the movement in the southern part of China.

On the notion of content reformation, both the innovative and conservative parties in the Commercial Press could not make a compromise. Mao Dun resigned from the Chief Editor of Fiction Monthly in 1923, but in 1927 he became the chief columnist of the ''Minguo yuebao''. He wrote more than 30 editorials for this newspaper to criticize Chiang Kai-shek, and to support revolutions.

Political life

Inspired by the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, Mao Dun took part in the May Fourth Movement in China. In 1920, he joined the Shanghai Communist Team, and helped to establish the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. At first, he worked as a liaison for the party. He also wrote for the party magazine 'The Communist Party' .

At the same time, Mao Dun participated in Chiang Kai-shek's , the main purpose was to unite the country. He quit, however, when Chiang's Kuomintang . In July 1928, he went to Japan in order to take refuge. As he returned to China in 1930, he joined the League of the Left-Wing Writers. Later, China went to war with Japan and he actively engaged in resisting the Japanese attack in 1937. In 1949, the communist government took over and he was responsible for working as Mao Zedong's secretary and Culture Minister until 1964.

As a literary man

Xiaoshuo Yuebao Reform was Mao Dun's first contribution to Chinese literature. The magazine then became a place where "New Literature" circulated. Many famous writers like Lu Xun, Xu Dishan, Bing Xin, Ye Shengtao, had their works published through it. Mao Dun supported movements such as "New Literature" and "New Thinking". He believed that Chinese literature should have a place in the world.

The experience of political conflict broadened his horizon in literature, therefore the theme of his later writing was mostly based on this. He then helped to found the League of Left-Wing Writers in 1930. After that, he worked together with Lu Xun to fight for the right of the society and the revolutionary movement in literature. The harvest period of Mao Dun's writing is considered to have been from 1927 to 1937.

''Shi'', the first actual novel written by Mao Dun, was composed of three volumes, ''Huanmie'' , ''Dongyao'' , and ''Zhuiqiu'' . It is the story of a generation of young intellectuals, who are caught up in the world of revolutionary fervor without a true understanding of the nature of social change. Mao Dun participated in Chiang Kai-shek's in an attempt to unite China, but this failed and he fled to Kuling, when the Kuomingtang dissolved relations with the Chinese Communist Party. In the 1930s he was one of the key founders of the League of Left-Wing Writers, which was dissolved in a quarrel in 1936.

Mao Dun's next major work was Hong , which became famous for having no less than 70 main characters and numerous plot twists and turns. In 1933 came his next grand work, , which gained great popularity, to a point that it was also published in French and English, and it allowed to develop a sense of revolutionary realism.
He left a work unfinished, the trilogy Shuangye Hongsi Eryuehua . After the initiation of the War in 1937, Mao traveled to many places and started a literary magazine in Wuhan. He edited the periodical Literary Front and the literary page of the newspaper Libao in Hong Kong and worked as a teacher. After 1943 Mao Dun did not produce any major works, but still wrote some articles and essays. In 1946 he visited the Soviet Union.

In 1927, he published his first novel, ''Disillusion'' . His most famous and important novel, ''Midnight'' , was published in 1933. It is a naturalistic novel exploring the commercial world of Shanghai in detail. In addition, his fiction offered a sympathetic portrayal of working-class life and praise of revolution.

When the People's Republic of China was established by the Communist Party of China in 1949, he became active on several committees and he worked as the Secretary and then the Minister of Culture for Mao Zedong until 1964. He started the monthly literary journal Chinese Literature, which became the most popular for western readers. He was dismissed from his position as minister in 1964 due to the ideological upheavals. Despite this fact, Mao Dun survived the Cultural Revolution and was afterwards rehabilitated. In the 1970s he became an editor of a children's magazine, and began working on his memoirs, which were serialized in the Party publication, the quarterly Xinwenxue Shiliao , but he died in March 27, 1981 before he could finish it. His influence on Chinese literature continues to the present day because he used his savings to set up a fund called the Mao Dun Literature Scholarship to promote an atmosphere for writing fiction.

Mao Dun's achievements in literature were also seen at his 50th birthday, which was also the 25th anniversary of his literary life. More than five hundred guests came to celebrate with him. Russian and American friends also joined the celebration. Wong Roufei wrote an essay as congratulations on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao Dun's influence and achievements in the literary field were witnessed. On the other hand, he was twice elected as the chairman and then once elected as the vice-chairman of the China Literary Arts Representative Assembly. His status in the literary field has been highly recognized. Although he suffered great pain from illness in his old age, he still kept writing his memoirs, called ''The Road I Walked'' .

Besides his achievements, Mao Dun also had great influence on Chinese literature. The Mao Dun Literature Prize was created due to Mao Dun's wish that outstanding novels should be encouraged and communist literature should be promoted. It is one of the most honorable literature awards in China. Many famous modern Chinese literary authors like and Zhou Ke-qin have received the prize.

List of works

Mao Dun has over 100 publications throughout his life, which includes short stories, novels, theories etc. Some of his most famous works include:

Short Stories

* ''Wild Rose'' (《野薔薇》 ''Ye Qiangwei''
* ''The Smoke and Cloud Collection'' 《煙雲集》 ''Yanyunji''

Long-short stories

* ''Disillusion'' 《幻滅》 ''Huanmie''
* ''Three people walking'' San Ren Xing, 《三人行》 ''Sanrenxing''
* ''The Shop Of the Lin Family'' 《林家铺子》 ''Linjia Puzi''
* ''Spring Silkworms and Other Stories'', 《春蚕》 ''Chuncan''
* ''Autumn Harvest'' 《秋收》 ''QiuShou''

Novels

* Hong, 《虹》 ''Hong''
* Ziye, 《子夜》 ''ZiYe''
* 《獻給詩人節》 ''XianGeiShiRenJie''

Theories

* 《茅盾近作》 ''MaoDunJinZuo''
* 《茅盾論創作》 ''MaoDunLunChuangZuo''

Essays

* 《蘇聯見聞錄》 ''SuLianJianWenLu''
* 《雜談蘇聯》 ''JiTanSuLian''

Drama script

* Qingming Qianhou, 《清明前後》 ''QianMingQianHou''

Translation

* 話劇《俄羅斯問題》
* 中篇小說《團的兒子》

Others

* 《茅盾全集》 ''Mao Dun Quanji''
* 《茅盾書簡》 ''Mao Dun Shujian'' later changed the name into《茅盾書信集》 ''Mao Dun Shuxinji''
* Huanmie, Dongyao, Zhaiqiu
* Lu, 1932
* Chunchan, 1932-33 - Spring Silkworms and Other Stories
* Tzu-Yeh, 1933
* Shih, 1933 - The Cancer
* Zhongguo Di Yir, 1936
* Duojiao Quanxi, 1937
* Diyi Jieduande Gushi, 1937
* Fushi, 1941 腐蝕 "Putrefaction", about the New Fourth Army Incident
* Shuangye Hongsi Eryuehua, 1942
* Jiehou Shiyi, 1942

Further reading on Mao Dun

* Chen, Yu-shih. ''Realism and Allegory in the Early Fiction of Mao Dun''.
* Gálik, Marián. ''Mao Tun and Modern Chinese Literary Criticism''.
* Gálik, Marián. ''The Genesis of Modern Chinese Literature Criticism''.
* Hsia, C.T. ''A History of Modern Chinese Fiction''.
* Li Pin. ''Bianji jia Mao Dun pingzhuan'' Kaifeng : Henan University press , 1995. Available in HKU FPS library.
* Shao Bozhou, et al. ed. ''Mao Dun de wenxue daolu''.
* Wang, David Der-wei. ''Fictional Realism in the Twentieth-Century China''.

Luo Guanzhong

Luo Guanzhong , born Luo Ben , was a author attributed with writing ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' and editing ''Water Margin'', two of the most revered adventure in Chinese literature.

Identity

Luo Guanzhong is confirmed to have lived in the end of Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty by the contemporary record by Jia Zhongming , who met him in 1364. It tells that he was from Taiyuan, while literary historians suggests other possibilities about his home, including Hangzhou and Jiangnan. According to Meng Fanren , Luo Guanzhong can be identified in the pedigree of the Luo family, and Taiyuan is most likely his home town.

Recent research has narrowed his date of birth to 1315-1318.

Literary historians are not certain Shi Naian and Luo Guangzhong are the same person, or if the name was used as a pseudonym by the editor of ''Water Margin'' who did not want to be associated with any anti-government themes that might be found in this work.

Works

The stories of ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' and ''Water Margin'' are presumed to have been developed by storytellers. The first editor who assembled ''Water Margin'' is thought to be Shi Naian, while Luo Guanzhong the secondary editor who brought it to the current form of 100 chapters. Luo Guanzhong is attributed with ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' as the editor, although it is suggested that Shi Naian may also possibly be the editor.

''Pingyao Zhuan'' is a ghost story attributed to Luo Guanzhong with 20 chapters, developed from the original pieces of storytelling based on a rebellion at the end of Northern Song Dynasty, and later enlarged by Feng Menglong into 40 chapters.
''Can Tang Wudai Shi Yanzhuan'' is a chronicle of the end of the Tang Dynasty and the following , a compilation of storytelling pices based on the rebel of .

Bibliography

*''Romance of the Three Kingdoms''
*''Water Margin''
*''Pingyao Zhuan''
*''Sansui Pingyao Zhuan''
*''Can Tang Wudai Shi Yanzhuan''
*''Fenzhuang Lou''
*''Sui Tang Zhizhuan''
*''Sui Tang Liangchao Zhizhuan''

Liu Sola

Liu Sola is a composer, author, and .

She has worked with James Blood Ulmer, Jerome Bailey, Wu Man, Henry Threadgill, Umar Bin Hassan, and Bill Laswell.

She is influenced by Chinese folk music, though she has also studied opera, and following her love of Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin toured the Mississippi Delta studying blues and playing with blues musicians. In the mid-80's she led an all female psychedelic Pink Floyd influenced band and in 1988 formed a reggae band.

In September 2001 she founded the New Folk Big Band in China.

Bibliography

Novellas

*''Ni Bie Wu Xuanze 你别无选择'' （1985）
*''Blue Sky Green Sea''（1985）
*''In Search of the King Of Singers''（1986）

Novels

*''Chaos And All''
*''大继家的小故事'' ''Small Tales of the Great Ji Family''
*（''女贞汤''）''Female Purity Soup''（2003）
*''LA GRANDE ?LE DES''
*''La Piccola Storia Della Grande Famiglia Ji''

Play

*''Fantasy of the Red Queen''（2006）

Discography

*''Blues in the East''
*''China Collage''
*''Haunts''（1997）
*''June Snow''（1998）
*''Spring Snowfall''（2000）
*''Sola and Friends'' （1999）
*''Apparitions''（2000）

Lin Haiyin

Lin Haiyin was a writer of Chinese ethnicity. She is now best remembered for her sensitive memoir 城南舊事 , which is a novelistic tribute to her childhood reminiscences of Beijing.

Born in Osaka, Japan, where her father worked as a merchant, Lin's parents moved first to Taiwan before settling in Beijing when she was 5. She would spend her next 25 years there. At Beijing Lin graduated from the News and Broadcast Institute as a journalist for ''Shijie Ribao'' .

In 1948 Lin returned with her husband and family to Taiwan, where she became the editors of several important literary periodicals and newspapers, and where she would reside for the rest of her life. Altogether she published some 18 books, including novels, short story collections, radio drama and children's literature, mostly dealing with the feminine experience. Her most famous book remains 城南舊事 . In it Lin records in lively, evocative, third-person prose her childhood memories, ending with the death of her father, from the eyes of a precocious, impressionable young girl.

''My Memories of Old Beijing'' was made into a Mainland China feature film in 1982, directed by Wu Yigong. The film won the Best Director Prize at the 3rd annual Golden Rooster Awards as well as Golden Eagle Prize at the Manila International Film Festival in 1983. In 1999, it was chosen as one of the 100 best 20th-century Chinese-language films by ''Asia Weekly''.

Li Yu (author)

Li Yu was a Chinese playwright, novelist and publisher. Born in Rugao, he lived in late- and early- dynasties.

Li was an actor, producer, and director as well as a playwright, who traveled with his own troupe. His play ''Fengzheng Wu'' remains a favourite of the Chinese Kun opera stage.

Li is the presumed author of ''Rouputuan'' , a well-crafted comedy and a classic of Chinese erotic literature. He also wrote a book of short stories called ''Shier Lou'' . In his time he was widely read, and appreciated for his daringly innovative subject matter. He broaches the topic of in the tale ''Cuiya Lou'' . This is a theme which he revisits in the collection ''Wusheng Xi'' .

The famous painting manual ''Jieziyuan Huazhuan'' was prefaced and published by Li in .

Translations

* Patrick Hanan . ''The Invention of Li Yu''. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-46425-7.
* Patrick Hanan . ''The Carnal Prayer Mat''. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1798-2.
* Patrick Hanan . ''Tower for the Summer Heat''. New York : Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11384-6.
* Nathan K Mao . ''Twelve towers : short stories''. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. ISBN 962-201-170-5.
* Jacques Dars . ''Au gré d'humeurs oisives : Les carnets secrets de Li Yu : un art du bonheur en Chine''. Arles : Editions Philippe Picquier. ISBN 2-87730-664-X
* ''Jou-pu-tuan : Andachtsmatten aus Fleisch ; e. erot. Roman aus d. Ming-Zeit''. Frankfurt am Main : Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag. ISBN 3-596-22451-9. 1986.
* LI?YU ''Jeou-P'ou-T'ouan, la chair comme tapis de prière'', translated by Pierre Klossowski; ?ditions Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Paris, 1979
* Li Yu: ''? mari jaloux, femme fidèle'', by Pascale Frey 1998

Critique

* Andrea Stocken: Das ?sthetikkonzept des Li Yu im Xianqing ouji im Zusammenhang von Leben und Werk. 2005 ISBN 3-447-05120-5
* HENRY, Eric: Chinese Amusement - The Lively Plays of Li Yü.Archon Books Hamden, CT 1980
* Воскресенский Д.Н. Ли Юй. Полуночник Вэйян или подстилка из плоти. М., Гудьял-Пресс
*Воскресенский Д.Н. Ли Юй. Двенадцать башен . М., Гудьял-Пресс

Lan Samantha Chang

Lan Samantha Chang , born 1965, is an writer of novels and . Her works include ''Hunger'', a novella plus four short stories, and ''Inheritance,'' a novel.

Life and career

She was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, the daughter of Chinese parents who survived the World War II Japanese occupation of China and later emigrated to the United States. Chang has received fellowships from Stanford University and Princeton University. She has most recently served as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer of Creative Writing at Harvard University. Chang received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa, an M.P.A. from Harvard University, and a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale University. At Yale, she served as managing editor of the Yale Daily News, and at Harvard, she received a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Chang is currently Professor of English at the University of Iowa and Director of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop; she is the first female and Asian American writer to serve as director of the Workshop. In 2008 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The five stories in '''' deal mainly with the position of Chinese in America, though the last of them is set in pre-Communist Shanghai. '''' is the story of a wealthy but declining family in Republican China, beginning in 1925 and extending through the period of the Japanese invasion and the post-war flight to Taiwan and then the USA.

Critical studies

as of March 2008:
#Jonathan Freedman. "Transgressions of a Model Minority." ''Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies'', 2005 Summer; 23 : 69-97.
#Hetty Lanier Keaton. ''Feeding Hungry Ghosts: Food, Family, and Desire in Stories by Contemporary Chinese American Women.'' Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2002 July; 63 : 187-88. U of Tulsa, 2002.

Jin Shengtan

Jin Shengtan , former name Jin Renrui , also known as Jin Kui , was a editor, writer and critic, who has been called the champion of Vernacular Chinese literature.

Biography

The year of Jin's birth is unclear, with some sources reporting 1610 and others 1608. The former estimate is based on the fact that Jin's son was 10 years old in East Asian age reckoning in 1641, and is generally accepted by scholars. He was born Jin Renrui in the town of Suzhou, a place celebrated for its culture and elegance. Jin's family was of the scholar-gentry class, but was constantly plagued by sickness and death, which led in turn to little wealth. Jin's father was apparently a scholar. Jin began schooling relatively late, attending a village school at the age of nine. He displayed great intellectual curiosity, and had somewhat unusual ideas. However, he was a conscientious student. Early in life, he took the style name "Shengtan", a phrase from the ''Analects'' meaning "the sage sighed". He passed only the lowest of the imperial examinations, and never held public office.

In his writings, Jin showed a great interest in the ideas of Chan Buddhism. He claimed that this interest began early, when he first read the ''Lotus Sutra'' at the age of 11. This inclination toward Buddhist ideas became even more pronounced after the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644. In that year and the one that followed, Jin became conspicuously more depressed and withdrawn, as well as more receptive to Buddhism. Zhang Guoguang attributed this change to the fall of the short-lived Li Zicheng regime. Throughout his life, Jin's interest in Buddhism affected his views, and he considered himself a mere agent of the forces of eternity.

Jin is sometimes said to have been known by the name Zhang Cai , but this appears to be a mistake due to confusion with a contemporary, Zhang Pu.

Death

In 1661, Jin joined a number of literati in protesting the appointment of a corrupt official. The protesters first petitioned the government, and then staged a public rally. This was met with swift retaliation from local officials, and Jin was sentenced to die. This incident is sometimes called "Lamenting at the Temple of Confucius" , and led to a stifling of political dissent for years after. Before his death, Jin supposedly joked, "Being beheaded is the most painful thing, but for some reason it's going to happen to me. Fancy that!" In a 1933 essay, noted writer Lu Xun admits that this quote may be apocryphal, but condemns it as "laughing away the cruelty of the human butcher".

Literary theory and criticism

He was known for listing what he called the "Six Works of Genius" : ''Zhuangzi'', ''Li Sao'', '''', Du Fu's poems, ''Romance of the West Chamber'' and ''Water Margin''. This list contained both highly classical works, like ''Li Sao'' and Du Fu's poems, and novels in vernacular Chinese that had their origins in the streets and marketplace. The six works were chosen based on their literary merit, as opposed to their upstanding morals. For these reasons, Jin was considered an eccentric and made many enemies among the conservative Confucian scholars of his day. In writing his commentaries, Jin firmly believed that the story that was written should be read on its own terms, apart from reality. In his commentary on ''Romance of the West Chamber'', he wrote, "the meaning lies in the writing, and does not lie in the event". In other words, it is the story that is written that matters, rather than how well that story emulates reality. At the same time, Jin believed that authorial intention is less important than the commentator's reading of a story. In his ''Romance of the West Chamber'' commentary, he writes, "''Xixiang Ji'' is not a work written by an individual named Wang Shifu alone; If I read it carefully, it will also be a work of my own creation, because all the words in ''Xixiang Ji'' happen to be the words that I want to say and that I want to write down".

Jin's version of ''Water Margin'' is most well known for the drastic alterations that he makes to the text. Earlier versions of the text are 100- or 120-chapter in length. Jin deletes a large portion of the story, from the second half of chapter 71 to the end of the novel. In order to bring the modified text to a conclusion, he composes an episode in which Lu Junyi has a vision of the execution of the band, and amends this to the second half of chapter 71. Jin also combines the Prologue of earlier editions with the first chapter, creating a new, single chapter titled "Induction". This forces the renumbering of all subsequent chapters, so Jin's version of ''Water Margin'' is referred to by scholars as the "70-Chapter Edition". In addition to the large changes described above, Jin also changes the text of the remaining chapters in three general ways. First, he improves the consistency of some sections, such that, for example, chapters whose content do not match their titles receive new names. Secondly, Jin makes the text more compact by removing sections that he feels do not advance the story, and by excising the incidental and verses. Finally, Jin makes subtle changes to the text for pure literary effect. These changes range from emphasizing the emotions of characters to changing story elements to make them more compelling.

Jin's critical commentary frequently oscillates between sympathizing with the individual bandit-heroes and condemning their status as outlaws. On one hand, he criticizes the evil official system that has led many of the 108 heroes to become bandits. He also expresses admiration for several of the men. On the other hand, he calls the band "malignant" and "evil". He especially criticizes Song Jiang, the leader of the group. Jin's removal of the last 30 chapters of the novel can be seen as an extension of his condemnation of banditry. In these chapters, the bandits are pardoned by Imperial edict, and are put in service of the country. Jin's version, by contrast, has all of the bandits captured and executed. He follows this ending with eight reasons why outlawry can never be tolerated.

Later readers of Jin have advanced two main theories for his divergent positions of admiring the bandits and yet denouncing them as a group. Hu Shi argues that China during Jin's life was being torn apart by two bands of outlaws, so Jin did not believe that banditry should be glorified in fiction. This agrees well with Jin's philosophy. His Buddhist and Taoist beliefs advocated natural development for every individual in society, while the Confucian part of him respected the emperor and the state as the ultimate authority. The other possibility is that Jin's attempt to reimage the novel into a condemnation of the bandits was to save the novel after it had been banned by the Chongzhen Emperor. This second theory is far-fetched, as the emperor's decree banning the novel was not promulgated until a year after the completion of Jin's commentary. Jin's views on the characters aside, he has unconditional praise for the novel as a work of art. He praises the vivid and lively characters of the novel, saying, "''Shui-hu'' tells a story of 108 men: yet each has his own nature, his own temperament, his own outward appearance, and his own voice". He also praises the work's vivid description of events, frequently remarking that the prose is "like a picture". Finally, Jin appreciates the technical virtuosity of the author, and names 15 separate techniques used by Shi Naian.

''Xixiang Ji'' commentary

In 1656, Jin completed his second major commentary, written on ''Xixiang Ji'', a 13th century Yuan Dynasty play known in English as ''Romance of the West Chamber''. This commentary follows a structure very similar to Jin's earlier ''Shuihu Zhuan'' commentary. It begins with two prefaces outlining Jin's reasons for writing the commentary followed by a third with notes on how the play should be read. The play itself follows, with introductory marks preceding each chapter and critical comments frequently inserted in the text itself. Jin undertakes fewer major structural alterations in this commentary than he does in critiquing ''Water Margin''. Each of parts I, III, IV, and V of the play is originally preceded by an "Induction". Jin merges these into the acts themselves. Part II of the play originally consists of five acts, which Jin condenses into four by merging the first and second acts.

As with ''Water Margin'', Jin frequently makes editorial changes to the play itself. These changes fall into two broad categories. Many changes are made in order to make the play's two young lovers, Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying, act and speak in accordance with their high class backgrounds. Jin particularly expresses his admiration for Yingying's beauty and character, and modifies any scenes which he feels painted her in too vulgar a light. Other changes are made for the simple reason of achieving superior literary effect. In the arias of the play, these changes include removing supernumerary words and changing words to more vivid descriptors. The strict metrical requirements of the aria format makes it difficult for Jin to make large-scale changes to these sections. However, it should be noted that some changes do violate the rhyme scheme as it existed during the Tang Dynasty or the rules of prosody. In the spoken sections of the play, Jin is much more liberal in making editorial changes. Many of these are intended to accentuate the emotions of the characters. The end result is that Jin's version of the play is an excellent literary work, but was viewed by contemporaries as unfit for the stage.

In his commentary, Jin frequently criticizes previous "unknowledgeable" readers, saying that they have missed many hidden meanings in the text. He sees it as his duty as a knowledgeable reader to reveal these meanings which the author has placed for him to find. In doing so, Jin also has the goal of portraying the play as worthy of study due to its deep technical, artistic, psychological, and social dimensions. In content, much of Jin's critical comments focus on the skill of the author in conveying emotions. Jin praises ''Romance of the West Chamber'' as " marvelous writing between heaven and earth". Other comments focus on Yingying. As mentioned above, Jin feels that she is the central character of the play, and a woman of great beauty and character. Jin feels that the play shows a great degree of unity and tightness in its structure. This opinion can be seen explicitly in his comments, as well as in the fact that he does not make structural alterations to the play to nearly the degree as in his version of ''Water Margin''. Jin does, however, comment on Part V of the play. This part has been thought by some commentators to be a continuation added by an author other than Wang Shifu. Jin agrees with this view, criticizing the last part as being inferior in quality to the previous sections and continuing the story past its vital point.

Reputation and legacy

Many of Jin's contemporaries admired him as a man possessing great literary talent. Qian Qianyi, a famous scholar, official, and historian of the late Ming Dynasty, proclaimed that Jin was possessed by a spirit, explaining his talent. In a biography of Jin, Liao Yan wrote that Jin had discovered the entire secret of competition. Some contemporaries and later writers did denounce Jin on moral grounds. Jin's contemporary Kui Zhuang called him "greedy, perverse, licentious, and eccentric".

After the May Fourth Movement in 1919, scholars like Hu Shi began to advocate the writing of novels in Vernacular Chinese. As a result, Jin gained recognition as a pioneer in the field of Chinese popular literature. Hu Shi himself praised Jin in the preface to his commentary on the ''Water Margin'', saying, "Sheng-t'an's ability to debate was invincible; his pen was most persuasive. During his time, he had the reputation of a genius. His death was also a case of extreme cruelty, which shook the whole country. After his death, his reputation became even greater". Liu Bannong, another scholar of the era, also praised Jin's version of ''Water Margin'' as the best edition in terms of literary value.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, many common views on history changed. Under the Communist government, ''Water Margin'' became a tale of peasant resistance to the ruling class, and ''Romance of the West Chamber'' symbolized the casting off of the outmoded traditional marriage system. Jin's critiques and editorial modifications of these works did not mirror the world view of Marxism, and he began to be criticized. In more recent years, however, Chinese historians have adopted a more balanced view of Jin.

Jia Pingwa

Jia Pingwa , novelist, born 21 February 1952 in Shangluo in Shaanxi province.

According to he is the third most popular writer in China, in a biennial poll conducted by the Chinese Publishing Science Research Center . His "Turbulence: a novel" won the According to in his 1993 novel, "Fei Du" "was banned for its explicit sexual content by the State Publishing Administration."

Han Suyin

Han Suyin , is the of Elizabeth Comber, born Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow . She is a -born Eurasian author of several books on modern China, novels set in East Asia, and , as well as a physician. She currently resides in Lausanne and has written in and .

Biography

Han Suyin was born in Xinyang, Henan , China. Her father was a Belgium-educated Chinese engineer surnamed Chow , of Hakka heritage, while her mother was a . In 1938 Han Suyin married Pao H. Tang , a military officer, who was to become a general. They one daughter .

She began work as a at Beijing Hospital in 1931, not yet fifteen years old. In 1933 she was admitted to . In 1935 she went to Brussels to study science. In 1938 she returned to China, working in an American Christian hospital in Chengdu , Sichuan, then went again to London in 1944 to study medicine at the Royal Free Hospital and graduated MBBS with Honours in 1948 and went to Hong Kong to practice medicine in 1949 at the Queen Mary Hospital. Her husband, Tang, meanwhile, had died in action during the Chinese Civil War in 1947.

In 1952, she married Leon F. Comber, a British officer in the Malayan Special Branch, and went with him to Johore, , where she worked in the Johore Bahru General Hospital and opened a clinic in Johore Bharu and Upper Pickering Street, Singapore. In 1955, Han Suyin contributed efforts to the establishment of Nanyang University in Singapore. Specifically, she offered her services and served as physician to the institution, after having refused an offer to teach literature. Chinese writer Lin Yutang, first president of the university, had recruited her for the latter field, but she declined, indicating her desire "to make a new Asian literature, not teach Dickens", according to the Warring States Project at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Also in 1955, her best-known work, ''A Many-Splendoured Thing'', was made into a . Much later, the movie itself was made into a daytime soap opera.

After Comber and Han Suyin's divorce, she later married Vincent Ratnaswamy, an colonel , and lived for a time in Bangalore, India. Later, Han Suyin and Vincent Ratnaswamy resided in Hong Kong and Switzerland. Since 1956, Han Suyin visited China almost annually becoming one of the first foreign nationals to visit post-1949 revolution China, including through the years of the Cultural Revolution.

Works

Cultural and political conflicts between East and West in modern history play a central role in Han Suyin's work. She also explores the struggle for liberation in Southeast Asia and the internal and foreign policies of modern China since the end of the imperial regime. Many of her writings feature the backdrop in East Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Her novel ''A Many-Splendoured Thing'', the story of a married but separated American reporter, who falls in love with a Eurasian doctor, was made into a film called ''''. This also inspired a .

Novels

*''Destination Chungking''
*''A Many-Splendoured Thing''
*''And the Rain My Drink''
*''The Mountain Is Young''
*''Winter Love''
*''Cast But One Shadow''
*''Four Faces''
*''L'abbé Pierre''
*''L'abbé Prévost''
*''Till Morning Comes''
*''The Enchantress''

Autobiographical works

*''The Crippled Tree''
*''A Mortal Flower''
*''Birdless Summer''
*''My House Has Two Doors''
*''Phoenix Harvest'' .
*''Wind In My Sleeve''
*''A Share of Loving''
*''Fleur de soleil, histoire de ma vie''

Historical studies

*''China in the Year 2001''
*''Asia Today: Two Outlooks''
*''The Morning Deluge: Mao Tsetong and the Chinese Revolution 1893-1954''
*''Lhasa, the Open City''
*''Wind in the Tower: Mao Tsetong and the Chinese Revolution, 1949-1965''
*''China 1890-1938: From the Warlords to World War''
*''Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China''

Han Shaogong

Han Shaogong is a prominent and innovative novelist and fictionist.

Han was born in Hunan, . While relying on traditional Chinese culture, in particular Chinese mythology, , Taoism and Buddhism as source of inspiration, he also borrows freely from Western literary techniques. As a teenager during the Cultural revolution he was labeled an ‘educated youth’ and sent to the countryside for re-education through labour . Employed at a local cultural center after 1977, he soon won recognition as an outspoken new literary talent. His early stories attacked the ultra-leftist degradation of China during the ; they tended toward a slightly style. However, he reemerged in the mid-1980s as the leader of an avant-garde school, the "Search for Roots" or the ''''.

Han's major work to date is ''A Dictionary of Maqiao'', a novel published in 1996 and translated into English in 2003. His writing is influenced by Kafka and by the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez. In 1987, he published a Chinese translation of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and edited ''Hainan Jishi Wenxue'' , a successful literary magazine. He has been given the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and with other Chinese writers visited France in 1988 at the invitation of the French Ministry of Culture. Han was invited back in 1989 but was denied permission to leave China until 1991.

Han's other works include ''Moon Orchid'' , ''Bababa'' , ''Womanwomanwoman'' , ''Deserted City'' , and ''Intimations'' .

Ge Fei (author)

Ge Fei , pen-name for Liu Yong , is a notable contemporary Chinese author whose works were prominent during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ge Fei was considered one of the preeminent experimental writers during that period, and he is currently a professor of literature at Qinghua University.

Biography

Ge Fei was born in , Jiangsu in 1964. He graduated from East China Normal University in 1985. His most prominent work, however, is the recent novel 人面桃花, ''Renmian Taohua'' , which explores the concept of utopia, and is written with many classical allusions. It is the first book of a planned trilogy. The second book, 山河入梦 ''Shanhe Rumeng'', was published in 2007.

The title of this book has been used by the director Du Haibin for his documentary on a gay club in Chengdu ; the English name for the film is ''Beautiful Men'' but this is not direct translation. Additionally, it would be inappropriate for the book title to be translated as such, especially since there is no gay connection in the novel and the main protagonist is female. To reiterate, the film has NO connection with Ge Fei's novel.

Feng Menglong

Feng Menglong was a vernacular writer/poet of the late Ming Dynasty. He was born in then Changzhou now Suzhou in Jiangsu Province.

Feng was a proponent of the school of which supported the importance of human feelings and behavior in literature. Most of his literary work was in editing and compiling histories, almanacs, novels, etcetera. Two noteworthy novels of his are ''Pingyao Zhuan'' and ''Qing Shi''. Another of his novels has recently drawn more attention and turned into a TV show is ''Dongzhou Lieguo Zhi'' . In 1620 he published the ''Gujin Xiaoshuo'' .

Works

*''Pingyao Zhuan''
*''Qing Shi''
*''Gujin Xiaoshuo'' published , also known as ''Yushin Mingyan''

Eileen Chang

Eileen Chang was a writer. She also used the pseudonym Liang Jing , though very rarely. Her works frequently deal with the tensions between men and women in love, and are considered by some scholars to be among the best Chinese literature of the period. Chang's work describing life in 1940s Shanghai and occupied Hong Kong is remarkable in its focus on everyday life and the absence of the political subtext which characterised many other writers of the period. Yuan Qiongqiong was an author in Taiwan that styled her literature exposing feminism after Eileen Chang's.
A poet and a professor at University of Southern California,
Dominic Cheung, said that
"had it not been for the political division between the Nationalist and Communist Chinese, she would have almost certainly won a Nobel Prize".

Early life

Born in Shanghai on September 30, 1920 to a renowned family, Eileen Chang's paternal grandfather Zhang Peilun was a son-in-law to Li Hongzhang, an influential court official. Chang was named Zhang Ying at birth. Her family moved to Tianjin in 1922, where she started school at the age of four.

When Chang was five, her birth mother left for the United Kingdom after her father took in a concubine and later became addicted to opium. Although Chang's mother did return four years later following her husband's promise to quit the drug and split with the concubine, a divorce could not be averted. Chang's unhappy childhood in the broken family was what likely gave her later works their pessimistic overtone.

The family moved back to Shanghai in 1928. Chang started to read Dream of the Red Chamber and two years later, her parents divorced, and she was renamed Eileen in preparation for her entry into the Saint Maria Girls' School. In 1932, she wrote her debut short novel.

Even in secondary school, Chang already displayed great talent in literature. Her writings were published in the school magazine.
After a fight with her stepmother and her father, she ran away from home to stay with her mother in 1938.
In 1939, Chang received a scholarship to study in the University of London, though the opportunity had to be given up due to the ongoing . She then went on to study
literature in the University of Hong Kong instead.
Chang met her life-long friend Fatima Mohideen while
at University of Hong Kong. Just one
semester short of earning her degree, Hong Kong fell to the Empire of Japan on December 25, 1941. The Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong would last until 1945.

Chang had left occupied Hong Kong for her native Shanghai.
Her original plan was to finish the degree at
Saint John's University, Shanghai, but it lasted for
only two months. Lack of money was one factor for her to
quit the university. She refused to get a teaching job or
to be an editor, but was determined to do what she was
best at - writing. In the spring of 1943, Chang made a
fateful trip to meet the editor Shoujuan Zhou to give him her writings - the rest was history, as Chang then became the hottest writer in
Shanghai in 1943-1944. It was during this period when her most acclaimed works, including ''Qing Cheng Zhi Lian'' and ''Jin Suo Ji'' , were penned. Her literary maturity
was beyond her age.

First marriage

Chang met her first husband Hu Lancheng in the winter
of 1943 and married him in the following year in a secret
ceremony. Fatima Mohideen was the witness. At the time
they had a relationship, Hu Lancheng was still married
to his third wife. She loved him dearly despite of this,
as well as being labeled a traitor for collaborating with the Japanese.
After the marriage,Hu Lancheng went to Wuhan to work
for a newspaper. When he stayed at a hospital in Wuhan,
he seduced a 17-year-old nurse, Xunde Zhou , who soon
moved in with him. When Japan was defeated in 1945, Hu used a
fake name and hid in Wenzhou, where he fell in love with yet another countryside woman, Xiumei Fan . When Chang traced him to his refuge, she realized she could not salvage the marriage. They finally divorced in 1947.

Life in the United States

In the spring of 1952, Chang migrated back to Hong Kong, where she worked as a translator for the American News Agency for three years. She then left for the United States in the fall of 1955, never to return to Mainland China again.

Second marriage

In MacDowell Colony, Chang met her second husband, the American scriptwriter Ferdinand Reyher, whom she married on August 14, 1956. While they were
separated briefly , Chang wrote that she was pregnant with Reyher's child.
Reyher wrote back to propose. Chang did not receive the letter,
but she called the next day telling Reyher she was coming over
to Saratoga, New York. Reyher got a chance to propose to her
in person, but insisted that he did not want the child.
After their marriage, they stayed in New York City
until October 1956 before moving back to MacDowell Colony.
Chang became a US citizen in July 1960, then went to Taiwan to look for more opportunities . Reyher had been hit by strokes from time to time, and eventually became paralyzed. Reyher died on October 8, 1967. After Reyher's death, Chang held short-term jobs at Radcliffe College
and UC Berkeley .

Translation work

Chang relocated to Los Angeles in 1972. Three years later, she completed the English translation of ''The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai'' , a celebrated novel in the Wu dialect by Han Bangqing 韓邦慶, 1856-1894. The translated English version was found after her death, among her papers in the University of Southern California, and published. Chang became increasingly reclusive in her later years.

Death

Chang was found dead in her apartment on Rochester Avenue in Westwood, California on September 8, 1995, by her landlord. The fact that she was only found a few days after her death is a testament to her seclusion. Her death certificate states the immediate cause of her death to be Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease . She was survived by her brother Zijing Zhang . Neither Chang
nor her brother had any children. Chang's life-long friend Fatima Mohideen
died a few month earlier, in June 1995 in New York.
According to her will, she was cremated without any open funeral and her ashes were released to the Pacific Ocean.
She asked in her will to give her all of her possessions to Stephen Soong and his wife Mae Fong Soong in Hong Kong, but copyright
was not mentioned in the will.

Works

*《秧歌》
*《赤地之戀》
*《流言》
*《怨女》
*《傾城之戀-張愛玲短篇小說集之一》
*《第一爐香-張愛玲短篇小說集之二》
*《半生緣》
*《張看》
*《紅樓夢魘》
*《海上花開-國語海上花列傳一》
*《海上花落-國語海上花列傳二》
*《惘然記》
** 惘然記
** 色，戒
** 浮花浪蕊
** 相見歡
** 多少恨
** 殷寶艷送花樓會
** 情場如戰場
*《續集》
*《餘韻》
*《對照記》
*《愛默森選集》
*《同學少年都不賤》
*《沉香》

Works in English translation

* ''Love in a Fallen City'' Translated by Karen Kingsbury and Eileen Chang. ISBN 1-59017-178-0
*"The Golden Cangue" is found in ''Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949'' HC ISBN 0-231-04202-7 PB ISBN 0-231-04203-5
* ''Lust, Caution'' Translated by Julia Lovell. New York: Anchor Books, 2007. ISBN 978-0-307-38744-8
*''Naked Earth'' Hong Kong: Union Press, 1956.
*''The Rice Sprout Song: a Novel of Modern China'' HC ISBN 0-520-21437-4, PB ISBN 0-520-21088-3
*''The Rouge of the North'' HC ISBN 0-520-21438-2 PB 0520210875
*''Traces of Love and Other Stories'' PB ISBN 962-7255-22-X
*''The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai'' ISBN 0-231-12268-3
*''Written on Water'' ISBN 0-231-13138-0

Films

Chang wrote several film scripts. Some of her works have been filmed and shown on the silver screen as well.

* ''Bu Liao Qing''
* Tai Tai Wan Sui
* Ai Le Zhong Nian
* Jin Suo Ji
* Qing Chang Ru Zhan Chang
* Ren Cai Liang De
* Tao hua yun
* Liu yue xin niang
* Wen Rou Xiang
* Nan Bei Yi Jia Qin
* Xiao er nu
* Nan Bei Xi Xiang Feng
* Yi qu nan wang
* Qing Cheng Zhi Lian
* Yuan Nu
* Gun Gun Hong Chen
* Hong Meigui Yu Bai Meigui
* Ban Sheng Yuan
*
* ''''

Duanmu Hongliang

Duanmu Hongliang (; real name Cao Jingping is a notable Chinese author whose works were prominent during the Second Sino-Japanese War and for whom the land and environment were pivotal fictional elements. He died in Beijing on October 5,1996, at the age of 84.

Duanmu attended Tsinghua University where he studied and wrote fiction, but returned to his homeland of Manchuria in his post-university years. His fiction in both short stories and novels are characterized by the 'native soil' style, which heavily emphasizes the agrarian environment and heartland values of his homeland region, a style pioneered by Duanmu and other Modern Chinese authors such as Shen Congwen.

In his novels dating from before the Communist victory in 1949, Duanmu evidences his ardour for the Manchurian landscape and environment most evidently in "The Khorchin Grasslands" , Duanmu's first full-length novel. "Eyes of Daybreak" and "An Early Spring" are his most important short stories, featuring earthy characters and simple plots focused on rural people, shown in a very positive light.

Dai Sijie

Dai Sijie is a French author and filmmaker of Chinese ancestry.

Biography

Dai Sijie was born in China in 1954. Because he came from an educated middle-class family, the Maoist government sent him to a reeducation camp in rural Sichuan from 1971 to 1974, during the Cultural Revolution. After his return, he was able to complete high school and university, where he studied art history. In 1984, he left China for France on a scholarship. There, he acquired a passion for movies and became a director. Before turning to writing, he made three critically-acclaimed feature-length films: ''China, My Sorrow'' , ''Le mangeur de lune'' and ''Tang, le onzième''. He also wrote and directed an adaptation of ''Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress'', released in 2002. He lives in Paris and writes in French.

A new novel, Par une nuit où la lune ne s'est pas levée appeared in 2007.

Novels

His first book, the semi-autobiographical ''Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise'' , was made into a movie, in 2005, which he himself adapted and directed. It recounts the story of a pair of friends who become good friends with local seamstress while spending time in a countryside village, where they have been sent for 're-education' during the Cultural Revolution . They steal a suitcase filled with classic Western novels from another man being reeducated, and decide to enrich the seamstress' life by exposing her to great literature. These novels also serve to sustain the two companions during this difficult time. The story principally deals with the cultural universality of great literature and its redeeming power. The novel has been translated into twenty-five languages, although not into Dai's native Chinese, as his work is banned in his country of origin.

His second book, ''Le Complexe de Di'' won the Prix Femina for 2003. It recounts the travels of a Chinese man whose philosophy has been influenced by French psychoanalyst thought. The title is a play on "le complexe d'Oedipe", or "the Oedipus complex". The English translation is titled ''Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch''.

Works

Books by Dai Sijie

* ''Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise''
* ''Le Complexe de Di''
* ''Par une nuit où la lune ne s'est pas levée'', 2007

Filmography as director

* ''Les filles du botaniste''
* ''''
* ''Tang le onzième''
* ''Le Mangeur de lune''
* ''Chine, ma douleur''

Cong Weixi

Cong Weixi , is a noted contemporary Chinese author and founder of the "daqiang wenxue" movement that reflected and brooded on the experiences of those in imprisoned the laogai, or reeducation through labor, system. Highly influential in the post-Mao literary scene, his works exerted a substantial influence on those of later Chinese authors. He was also director of the Writers' Publishing House.

Early life

Cong Weixi was born on April 7, 1933 in the town of Daiguantun, in what is today Yutian county, Hebei province, China. His father was the son of a local landlord; he, along with two of his brothers, all attended college, a rare feat in pre-1949 China. When Weixi was born, his father was working in Chongqing as an aerospace engineer. However, when the young Weixi was merely 4 years old, his father was imprisoned by the Kuomintang for expressing pro-Communist sentiments, and died in prison to tuberculosis.

Throughout elementary and middle school, Weixi immersed himself in literature. By the time he was 17, he enrolled in the Beijing Normal School, and began publishing works.

Pre-Laogai Career

Weixi became a teacher and then a journalist. He published two novellas and one novel that earned him quite a bit of fame and money. In 1957, one month after his son was born, however, Weixi was branded as a “rightist" in the post- anti-Rightist Campaign, along with three other young writers. They were known as the "Four Black Swans" from the ballet Swan Lake.

Post-Laogai Career

Weixi was released in 1979 and resumed literary work, publishing the novel ''The Blood-Stained Magnolia beneath the Wall'' , fathering what became "大墙文学", literally "High Wall Literature", which reflected on the traumas suffered by political prisoners in laogai camps during the anti-Rightist Campaign and Cultural Revolution. By 1984, as his shorter works began to win numerous awards and a steady income, Weixi was able to focus on longer works. His first, 北国草 (, won four citywide literary awards in Beijing. In 1986, he published another work entitled 断桥, or ''Broken Bridge'', which also won numerous awards.

In 1987, he published the first third of his defining autobiographical work, 走向混沌 , which chronicled his life from 1949 onwards. This work aroused a passionate response both within China and overseas. After this, he completed three more novels: 裸雪 , 酒魂西行 , and 逃犯 , in addition to numerous shorter works and essays, such as 远去的白帆 . His works were collected into an anthology in 1995. In 1998, he completed ''A Walk Unto Chaos'' to much acclaim. His works have been translated into English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Slavic.

He was inducted into the "Who's Who" list in 1988.

Chiung Yao

Chiung Yao or Qiong Yao is a popular Taiwanese romance novelist. Many of her works have been made and remade into movies and TV series. During 1990s, her novels and TV series adapted from her works were a hit in Taiwan and Mainland China. Among her many novels, Huan Zhu Ge Ge, or "Princess Returning Pearl" in English, is by far the best-known and popular.

Both her father and mother received a good education. She was born in the capital city Chengzhong of Sichuan province. In 1949, along with her family, she moved to Taiwan, where she attended 台北师范附小 and Taipei First Girls' High School . At the age of 16, she published her first novel. During high school she had published over 200 articles. After graduation from high school and failure to enter college, she got married and became a housewife, and at the same time started her writing career.

Works

* 窗外
* 幸運草
* 六個夢
* 煙雨濛濛
* 菟絲花
* 幾度夕陽紅
* 潮聲
* 船
* 紫貝殼
* 寒煙翠
* 月滿西樓
* 翦翦風
* 彩雲飛
* 庭院深深
* 星河
* 水靈
* 白狐
* 海鷗飛處
* 心有千千結
* 一簾幽夢
* 浪花
* 碧雲天
* 女朋友
* 在水一方
* 秋歌
* 人在天涯
* 我是一片雲
* 月朦朧鳥矇矓
* 雁兒在林梢
* 一顆紅豆
* 彩霞滿天
* 金盞花
* 夢的衣裳
* 聚散兩依依
* 卻上心頭
* 問斜陽
* 燃燒吧﹗ 火鳥
* 昨夜之燈
* 匆匆﹐ 太匆匆
* 失火的天堂
* 我的故事
* 冰兒
* 剪不斷的鄉愁
* 雪珂
* 望夫崖
* 青青河邊草
* 梅花烙
* 鬼丈夫
* 水雲間
* 新月格格
* 煙鎖重樓
* 還珠格格《三之一》 陰錯陽差
* 還珠格格《三之二》 水深火熱
* 還珠格格《三之三》 真相大白
* 蒼天有淚《三之一》 無語問蒼天
* 蒼天有淚《三之二》 愛恨千千萬
* 蒼天有淚《三之三》 人間有天堂
* 還珠格格第二部《五之一》風雲再起
* 還珠格格第二部《五之二》生死相許
* 還珠格格第二部《五之三》悲喜重重
* 還珠格格第二部《五之四》浪跡天涯
* 還珠格格第二部《五之五》紅塵作伴
* 還珠格格第三部《三之一》天上人間
* 還珠格格第三部《三之二》天上人間
* 還珠格格第三部《三之三》天上人間

Chen Yingzhen

Chen Yingzhen , born 1936, is a Taiwanese author. Since the 1980s, he has been viewed by many as "Taiwan's greatest author", according to Jeffrey C. Kinkley. Chen is also notable for serving a prison sentence for "subversive activity" between 1968 and 1973. He has been active since the late-1950s.

Chen was again imprisoned in 1979.

The ''Collected Works of Chen Yingzhen'' is 15 volumes long, and was published in 1988. Some of his stories were also included in Lucien Miller's ''Exiles at Home''.

Biography

Chen Yingzhen was born in northern Taiwan, the son of a devout Christian minister. Despite this, he never was a Christian himself while growing up. He was arrested in 1968 by the Kuomintang for "leading procommunist activities", and was imprisoned until 1973.

Style

Some critics have seen Chen's work as featuring important moral dimensions while lacking technical proficiency. For example, Joseph S. M. Lau said of Chen, "his output is relatively small and his style is at times embarrassing, yet he is a very important writer...Almost alone among his contemporaries, he addresses himself to some of the most sensitive problems of his time".

Thought

Chen has been supporter of the notion of a unifying Chinese national identity in Taiwan, as opposed to "nativist" writers like Zhang Liangze, who support the development of a native Taiwanese consciousness.

Zu Lin

Zu Lin is a writer.


Zu Lin has written a novel, ''The Road of Life'' , short stories and children's stories.

Further Reading

*''Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Writing''

Zhou Weihui

Zhou Weihui (, is a writer, living and working in Shanghai and New York.

Her novel ''Shanghai Baby'' was banned in the People's Republic of China as "decadent". Her latest novel ''Marrying Buddha'' was censored, modified and published in China under a modified title.

She is often associated with Mian Mian, another slightly older member of the so-called "New Generation".

Life and Work

Zhou Weihui, known in the West as Wei Hui, studied Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, after a year of military training. Her first short story was published at the age of 21. Her first novel Shanghai Baby, was a local bestseller in Shanghai. Soon after its publication, ''Shanghai Baby'' was banned by the Chinese government, because of the novel's explicit sexual scenes and bold portrait of China's new generation. The publishing house that published the novel was temporarily closed for 3 months. ''Shanghai Baby'' was published overseas where it became an international bestseller. ''Shanghai Baby'' has been translated into 34 different languages and has sold over six million copies in 45 countries. ''Shanghai Baby'' has sold more copies than any other work of Chinese contemporary literature.

A German film adaptation of ''Shanghai Baby'', starring Bai Ling was released in 2007, however it has not been released outside of film festivals.

Marrying Buddha, Weihui's second novel and a sequel to ''Shanghai Baby'', was published in 2005 and became another international bestseller. Like ''Shanghai Baby'', the novel is narrated by Coco, a thinly disguised Weihui. Coco is described by Weihui as a 'representative of socially and sexually liberated Chinese young women'. ''Marrying Buddha'' continues Coco's journey of self-discovery in terms of her sexuality.

Wei Hui has been regarded by international media as a spokeswoman of the new generation of Chinese young women. She has presented her work in a large number of Western publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, the BBC, The Times, The Sunday Times, the Economist, Stern, Welt am Sonntag, Asahi Shimbun, NHK, Yomiuri Shimbun, Le Monde, Le Figaro and more.

Apart from ''Shanghai Baby'' and ''Marrying Buddha'', Zhou Weihui has published four other books in Chinese and :

# The Shriek of the Butterfly
# Virgin in the Water
# Crazy Like Weihui
# Desire Pistol

Zhao Shuli

Zhao Shuli was a novelist and a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. Born in 1906 in Qinshui County 沁水縣, Shanxi Province, he was originally called 趙樹禮, which, in Mandarin Chinese, was a homophone of the name he later adopted in his adult career.

Zhao's major novels include 小二黑結婚 ''Xiao Erhei jiehun'', "Xiao Erhei's Marriage"; 李有才板話 ''Li Youcai banhua''; 李家莊的變遷 ''Li jiazhuang de bianqian'', "Fortunes of the Li Estate"; and 三里灣 ''San li wan'', "Three Mile Bay". The action of Zhao's novels typically takes place in the countryside of . In this setting, Zhao explores the dilemmas and conflicts of villagers who are facing growing social upheaval. Zhao was renowned for achieving nuanced portrayals of the diverse cast of human characters which were to be found in provincial life. With this objective in mind, he launched the Shanyaodan literary movement, which took its name from a Northern colloquialism for and marked one of the most influential developments in 20th century Chinese writing.

Zhao was a member of the executive committee of the Chinese Writers Union and also served as the director of the Society of Chinese Authors, the president of the Society of Chinese Poets, and an editor of the journals 曲藝 ''Quyi'' and 人民文學 ''Renmin Wenxue'' . He was also appointed a representative to the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and a deputy in the first, second, and third sessions of the National People's Congress.

He died in 1970, having fallen victim to the persecutions that were launched against intellectuals, artists, and countless other "undesirables" during the Cultural Revolution.

Zhao Jingshen

Zhao Jingshen , was a popular novelist. Born in Lishui, Zhejiang province, he was a member of the Seminar in literature. He also contributed to the field of translation and XiQu and made a great success. He also funded some outstanding writers.

Zhang Ziping

Zhang Ziping was a writer born in Mei County, Guangdong

Biography

Zhang received a classical education and, after studying in Japan from 1912, received a degree in geology from Tokyo Imperial University in 1922. On his return to China, he engaged in various business ventures, wrote, taught geology and literature. However, he eventually decided on a literary career, and with several others of his ilk, he co-founded the "Creation Society" which promoted vernacular and modern literature. He worked as an editor of their literary magazine and it was during this time that he published the first of his many novels.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War he worked for the collaborationist Wang Jingwei Government, but after the defeat of the Empire of Japan he was arrested and tried by the Kuomingtang government for treason in 1947. Nothing after this date is known of him.